Intro

Learn about where serverless compute went wrong and how we can fix it so that the visions of "just upload your code and it works" becomes a reality.

Whiteboards. Proof of Concepts. Pairing. Spikes. These are all tools we use every day to have high-level technical conversations about ideas we propose or approaches we think are the “right” way. As someone advances in their career into more experienced levels of software engineering, however, a critical skill becomes how you conduct and lead these conversations. It involves clearly articulating a vision and securing buy-in, while also valuing and integrating the diverse perspectives and feedback from your peers. The goal beyond each individual conversation is to foster an environment where ideas can be exchanged, discussed, enhanced, and decided on. You’ll walk away from this talk with some new, innovative approaches to try out that not only help get your technical ideas across but also solicit additional thoughts and opinions in ways that engage and effectively address different points of view.

Good feedback has the power to improve performance, increase team engagement, and lead to higher quality products. The ability to deliver feedback is an essential skill for high performing teams. Good feedback is clear and delivered in a way that preserves working relationships. This talk will explore key elements to include in good feedback and leave attendees able to more confidently and effectively communicate both positive and constructive thoughts to their teammates.

Panel Discussion - AI

Ineffective communication wastes time and causes confusion. This ignite talk introduces a strategic framework to create meaningful context in presentations. By mastering three key elements—establishing relevance, sharing the underlying purpose, and setting clear outcomes—presenters can transform their communication approach. Learn how to quickly orient your audience, connect your message to their interests, and ensure every discussion moves purposefully toward actionable insights. This method guarantees more focused, efficient, and impactful conversations across professional environments.

In modern microservices ecosystems, where applications are distributed, independent, and interconnected, ensuring seamless integration and robust functionality is critical. In this session, I will share insights from leading the development of the Unified Regression Suite for one of the key initiatives —a multi-application environment comprising numerous microapplications.

Scaling GitOps for large-scale deployments can be challenging with a single repository or controller. This talk explores sharding as a strategy to optimize performance, improve reliability, and manage complexity in GitOps workflows for multi-environment or multi-tenant setups.

Open Spaces Organization

Open Spaces - Day 1

Welcome Back

Let’s face it: test automation is hard. Teams across the industry continue to struggle with the same old problems again and again: flaky tests, poor coverage, and never enough time to develop automation. While many teams have reached success, many others feel left behind.

It’s time to rethink how we approach testing and automation. Instead of building automated test suites that merely repeat hard-coded presuppositions, what if we built autonomous tools that could learn our products dynamically and point out changes during development? Any time we make a change to the code, we could run these tools to find out if the actual changes in behavior meet our expectations or cause bugs.

In this talk, we will learn what autonomous testing is and how it will make testing truly Agile. Although we don’t have fully autonomous tools available yet, we will learn how we can start building them today. Autonomous testing could help resolve so many frustrating parts of testing. Let’s build that future together!

In this talk, we'll explore how disconnected environments, while beneficial for security, increase the complexity of Kubernetes deployments. You’ll learn the challenges encountered when bringing images, Helm charts, and Git repositories into environments lacking direct external access.

We'll then delve into how Zarf, an OpenSSF sandbox project, enables cluster operators to package everything needed for their workloads into a single, OCI artifact to be deployed onto an air-gapped cluster. You’ll see how Zarf streamlines rapid iteration of workloads to make them air-gap ready. Finally, we’ll cut off all network access and demonstrate deploying both a cluster and an application in a fully air-gapped environment.

Learn about how technical transformation and dedication to excellent DevOps practices precede any organizational revolution when looking to change with purpose. Although cultural pillars of high performing teams like trust and accountability are widely sought after, certain DevOps practices help lead to these tendencies more naturally, enabling leadership to quickly see the fruits of their support and engineers to work autonomously, avoid toil and be able to rely on each other to achieve the best outcomes.

Ephemeral development environments, like those provided by GitHub Codespaces, continue to transform how Software and DevOps engineers work. These environments offer compelling advantages, from cost savings to data security to simplicity and security-- paralleling the benefits of the quick-start short-lived infrastructure we use in production. Together let's explore seven reasons to love ephemeral development environments and why they are continuing to be more common. As a Devops Engineer, not only can you reap the benefits, but you might soon find yourself managing the cluster that runs them!

When you’re improving your CI/CD pipelines and processes, implementing trunk-based development is usually the first step you’ll need to take. This is because true CI/CD is simply applied TBD – you’re building, testing, and pushing small (yet fully functional) code changes to main with a daily cadence. Implementing TBD is more than just adjusting the development workflow at the IC level – it involves infrastructure, tooling, and leadership changes.

In this ignite, we’ll discuss what steps you’ll need to take to enable your team to develop and deploy faster under TBD. We’ll zoom in and talk about the importance of “test before merge”, self-service infrastructure, and quality CI/CD pipelines.

Generative AI is revolutionizing the technology industry at an unprecedented pace, reshaping how professionals develop software, write documentation, and solve complex problems. While this rapid evolution presents opportunities for efficiency and acceleration, it also raises critical questions about dependency, reliability, and best practices. By integrating AI into workflows without compromising core engineering principles, technology professionals can harness its potential while maintaining control and quality in their work.

This talk explores three fundamental best practices for leveraging generative AI effectively: small batch delivery, thoughtful evaluation, and observability-driven development. These principles ensure that AI-generated outputs remain manageable, high-quality, and transparent. Additionally, the discussion extends to scenarios where AI can take the lead. By thoughtfully incorporating AI into software development, engineers can strike a balance between innovation and responsibility, ensuring sustainable and maintainable technical solutions.

Understand and leverage the value of each member of your team by using the 3Hs – Honest, Holistic, and Humor.

Open Spaces Organization

Open Spaces - Day 2